Overpopulation: Time to panic, or false alarm?

posted at 3:11 pm on January 14, 2013 by Erika Johnsen

For decades now (centuries, really), Malthusian pessimists, environmental alarmists, and their doom-and-gloom ilk have warned that humanity will eventually reach a rate of both population and economic growth that cannot possibly last without unsustainably depleting the world’s resources. Ostensibly, the theory goes, our water, food, and energy supplies will not be able to keep pace with the planet’s inevitably exponential population growth, and that the planet won’t be able to take the strain of so much human output and waste. Ergo, we’re supposedly in for eventual dark ages of scarcity, famine, poverty, war, and disease that we’ll necessarily need to keep our population down.

I missed this story from Slate last week, but there’s plenty of mounting evidence that all of the naysayers are whipping up panic about nothing that’s all that threatening in the long run:

It took humankind 13 years to add its 7 billionth. That’s longer than the 12 years it took to add the 6 billionth—the first time in human history that interval had grown. (The 2 billionth, 3 billionth, 4 billionth, and 5 billionth took 123, 33, 14, and 13 years, respectively.) In other words, the rate of global population growth has slowed. And it’s expected to keep slowing. Indeed, according to experts’ best estimates, the total population of Earth will stop growing within the lifespan of people alive today.

And then it will fall.

This is a counterintuitive notion in the United States, where we’ve heard often and loudly that world population growth is a perilous and perhaps unavoidable threat to our future as a species. But population decline is a very familiar concept in the rest of the developed world, where fertility has long since fallen far below the 2.1 live births per woman required to maintain population equilibrium. In Germany, the birthrate has sunk to just 1.36, worse even than its low-fertility neighbors Spain (1.48) and Italy (1.4). The way things are going, Western Europe as a whole will most likely shrink from 460 million to just 350 million by the end of the century. That’s not so bad compared with Russia and China, each of whose populations could fall by half. As you may not be surprised to learn, the Germans have coined a polysyllabic word for this quandary: Schrumpf-Gesellschaft, or “shrinking society.”

Widespread prosperity may very well mean the consumption of more resources, but it also means that as more people enter the middle class and become better educated, we use our resources increasingly wisely and efficiently and that global population growth has started to flatten out — in fact, as the Slate article goes on to explain, there’s even the possibility in the next few centuries that we’ll be looking at a crisis of underpopulation. The point is, all the doom-and-gloomers disparaging humanity’s prospects too often overlook our remarkable capability to adapt and adjust to changing conditions, and our penchant for alarmist-hysteria comes a little too easily.

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Most of the people panicking about overpopulation are the flat-earther global warming types. The West, Japan, and China have been following their lunatic policy prescriptions for decades. Unfortunately, this is now why we are having a major population decline in all these nations right now.

The future belongs to those who show up. We forgot that somewhere along the way.

…Dems: We need to pay for more abortions!…World Wide!…Expand Planned Parenthood!

If we can’t make headway with abortions and people having fewer kids, other methods will be employed.

For certain environmental extremists, I understand the ideal world population is around 350,000,000 inhabitants, and those extremists won’t be satisfied until they find and use methods to get the population down to that number.

The point is, all the doom-and-gloomers disparaging humanity’s prospects too often overlook our remarkable capability to adapt and adjust to changing conditions, and our penchant for alarmist-hysteria comes a little too easily.

Ultimately, rising population is the only thing that sustained the welfare/entitlement state, as there were always more people contributing to social programs than taking from them. The libs are going to wish population were still increasing, when the entire system, which is crumbling as we speak, goes completely bust.

Overpopulation is about power
Gun control is about power
Immigration reform is about power
Feminism is about power
Obama care is about power
Social justice is about power
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To liberals it’s NEVER about the subject it is about seizing more power for themselves.

Considering the bitter clingers of America over the last couple of months have bought enough weapons to arm the Chinese and Indian armies to go along with the nearly 300 million already in their possession I believe it will be the greenies exiting the surplus population first.

As the opening session paper puts it: “The real challenge comes from the exponential growth of the global consumerist society driven by ever higher aspirations of the upper and middle layers in rich countries as well as the expanding demand of emerging middle-class in developing countries. Our true ambition should be therefore creating incentives for the profound transformation of attitudes and consumption styles.”

This is globalist talk for dismantling the middle classes by looting them with carbon taxes and consumption levies in the name of alleviating poverty in poorer areas of the world and stopping climate change. However, as we have already explained, this is merely a ruse. The money will not be “redistributed” to the poor, it will be swallowed up by the same globalist institutions running the scam.
The leaked document also discusses how the UN can exploit mass immigration to push for more global governance regulatory control, in focusing on, “How to capitalize on the global tide of migrants from poor nations to rich ones, to encompass a new “international migration governance framework.”

The paper makes it clear that the UN is about to adopt a new public relations ploy in pushing the phony and discredited global warming mantra, by re-branding it as the threat of overpopulation. The world’s population is set to hit 9 billion by 2050, and the strategy outlines the need to make that figure the key emphasis in an effort to browbeat people into accepting that an overcrowded planet causes environmental devastation.

The paper makes it clear that the UN is about to adopt a new public relations ploy in pushing the phony and discredited global warming mantra, by re-branding it as the threat of overpopulation.
Dante on January 14, 2013 at 3:46 PM

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Not a new ploy. The Population Bomb was written in 1968.
The Club of Rome about the same time.
UN for years warned about exponential growth, only to have to revise downward the growth curve every 5-10 years.

…Dems: We need to pay for more abortions!…World Wide!…Expand Planned Parenthood!

KOOLAID2 on January 14, 2013 at 3:23 PM

There’s the ticket – fund Planned Parenthood to set up shop in the 3rd world countries and those with an exploding Muslim population.
That should solve the excess population problem as well as make a pretty good impact on crime/terrorism, poverty, and starvation…..

The population will level off. People are moving into the middle class in China, India, even Africa by the hundreds of millions a year. With even a some freedom you can accomplish a lot. With a lot of freedom we can do even better. Imagine Hong Kongs as far as the eye can see.

Also, in the US, we already have a solid plan to cut back on the excess population. In very short order Obamacare will make sure we kill off the old and sick. So – hey – Obamacare is the perfect Darwinian predator – strengthen the human herd by eliminating the “undesirables” – right?//

The “overpopulation” mantra was always nothing but hooey. There have been localized cases – but even those are just as accurately described as “undercapitalized” or “underproductive” instead, because those are really the problem, not the number of people itself.

For the left, of course, the nature of the supposed “crisis” is irrelevant as long as it sounds scary enough. The solution is always the same, whether we face global warming or a new Ice Age, over- or under-population, rising or falling agricultural output, etc.: greater government control over people and their wealth.

For decades now (centuries, really), Malthusian pessimists, environmental alarmists, and their doom-and-gloom ilk have warned that humanity will eventually reach a rate of both population and economic growth that cannot possibly last without * unsustainably * depleting the world’s resources.

Erika Johnsen

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The politics of “sustainable vs unsustainable” as regards the environment and the earth’s resources, was started by Maurice Strong.

Eh. The lemmings have to have something to worry them. If it’s not A NEW ICE AGE, Global Warming, food shortages, earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, floods, zombies…………….too bad that lemmings aren’t unsustainable. Sooner or later we’d catch a break.

Funny… I’ve yet to see a satellite image of the earth where the human hordes have completely covered the land mass. If we were overpopulated… we’d be able to see it from space.

Instead.. look at all the land mass. And ocean. and then, of course.. we still have the moon.

Libs solution to so called overpopulation (which we aren’t) always seem centered around extermination of one sort or another. With them in charge of the extermination, of course. Why not focus on the obvious. Irrigation of the wastelands of the earth. Encourage farming instead of attacking farmers. Stop putting corn into our gas tanks so there is more for food. Don’t dismantle NASA… expand exploration in space and build a moon base. Colonize it.

But no… it’s so much easier to just kill people.

I have a hunch the libs of history have been whining about overpopulation since the beginning of time. Even Scrooge used overpopulation as a reason to let orphans die. Proof the libs of that day were whining about it then too.

The US is about 4% of the world population. The problem isn’t ours unless we close the borders and stop funding illiterates to have babies at taxpayer expense. Our problem is funding population that won’t fend for themselves.

The point is, all the doom-and-gloomers disparaging humanity’s prospects too often overlook our remarkable capability to adapt and adjust to changing conditions, and our penchant for alarmist-hysteria comes a little too easily.

What they really overlook is our ability to do so through what would be called “market forces”. That is, that we don’t need some elitist cabal of government nerds telling us to all lay off the baby-making. We just need as much correct information as possible to be out in the public sphere, and the people will – in the long run – begin to change their ways and adapt. No government nanny necessary.

I much prefer the idea of re-introducing bears and wolves to the urban setting. I guarantee that it will 1) cut down on any over-population issues, 2) take care of a lot of our welfare problem (that woman buying 40 bags of cheese doodles and 3 cartons of menthols will *not* out-run the bear), and 3) teach liberals to be self-reliant or die trying.